M. & P.'s Room Redecoration

We recently painted M. and P.'s room pink and hung a pretty little chandelier. Now, I have to figure out if I should take the time to wallpaper the back of their closet door. (It will look cute, but our landlord won't like it, which leads to the point that we rent, and do not own our apartment...which makes me feel so torn about wallpapering my own closet, for the same reasons.)

And I have this horrible storage problem on my hands. Why do small children have so much stuff? And, because of my horrible internet shopping hesitations, I can't find a good solution. So, for the moment all of their stuff is living in Z.'s room. Why is it that I can't make internet purchases?

On the other hand, I made my first purchases from Etsy, so wish me luck! Etsy has all kinds of wonderful handmade things. I ordered some lovely art and a pair of unicorn bookends.

The Many Fears of M.

M. is a fearful child, I guess terrified is the more appropriate word. Clancy and I had to throw away the book Mommy Doesn't Know My Name, because on one page, Hannah, the heroine, appears to be a chickadee. M. is quite terrified of chickens because, she insists, of their pointy beaks. Sometimes when I read to her, I will look at her, and she will be covering her face with her little hands. The book The Monster at the End of the Book really just about sent her over the deep end. (Straight to the garbage).

She is also terrified of skeletons and skulls, so the current trend of skull decorated clothing has presented numerous problems. Once she even told me that she was scared of the food at the grocery store. I think only Clancy and I could have produced such a fearful little thing. I have always been extremely scared of all kinds of things, when I was young I bordered on total OCD, I thought that my fears wouldn't materialize SO LONG AS I took five steps to get to my bed, had five pillows in my bed, kept my silverware pointing towards myself at all meals, and spelled words out in my head in complicated patterns all related to the number five. I am better now, perhaps due to the extremely large dose of Zoloft that I take every day.

And Clancy is no better, he has fears related to supernatural phenomenon, while my fears are more along the lines of scary thoughts about murderers. And the two of us have very regular, unreasonable anxiety related to fears about our careers and lives.

The worst part about all of this is that when I was a little girl, I can remember admiring my parents and thinking about how fearless they seemed. They weren't afraid that my dolls were going to watch me and kill me when I fell asleep. I couldn't wait to grow up so that my fears would dissolve like theirs seemed to have. But now that I have grown up, unfortunately I am just as scared of aliens (my one predominant supernatural type fear) as I was when I was a little girl.

Poor M. I really wish that she hadn't inherited this unfortunate quality from us.

Jack the Wolf by Yvonne Jagtenberg

This book is a good read for someone who is just about to, or has just started preschool. Jack, the main character is very shy and scared when he arrives on the first day at his new school, particularly because everybody else already knows each other and has the hang of things. But, then Jack gets to pretend he is a wolf, and all of the children are scared of Jack. Jack is thrilled by this turn of events, and wants another turn at playing the wolf.

I think that this book speaks to a very human feeling. When you are hurt by someone, you want them to know what it feels like, and so you try to hurt them back. I think it is particularly a feeling that small children can relate to--see previous post. When M. grabs something from P., P.'s instinct is to bite, unfortunately for M. And it is more than mere self defense, P. wants to make M. in the same way that M. angered her.

Or when Clancy and I fight, so many of our remarks, once we are in the heat of the argument are just intended to cause reciprocal pain.

Jack feels the same way when he puts the wolf mask on. He is finally able to reciprocate the intimidation that he felt from the other children. I like how the author doesn't make any moral judgments about the pleasure Jack takes in scaring the other children. It is successful because children can relate to it. M. makes me read this one every night.